


we're giving up sounds

by nasaplates



Category: K-pop, SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Emotional Constipation, Established Relationship, Feelings Realization, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Light Angst, M/M, Mention of past suicidal ideation, Vacation, idolverse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-27 15:32:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18741889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nasaplates/pseuds/nasaplates
Summary: Minghao is next to him. Minghao is always next to him, these days.





	we're giving up sounds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [figure8](https://archiveofourown.org/users/figure8/gifts).



> written for SVT Jukebox: YOU & I - Years & Years  
> fantastic fest, fantastic mods, all my love to everyone involved <3
> 
> as always, as with everything I write, this is for len.

There is Chinese sand between Junhui's toes and he feels like he can breathe for the first time in...well. In so long he's lost the days. Lying can do that to a person. Make them measure the time in crises averted, rather than hands on a clock.

Minghao is next to him. Minghao is always next to him, these days. Jun used to think it was because of a friendly language, a taste of the motherland far from home. Jun was drawn to him the same way, honestly, in the space that Mingming left. He thought it was a terrible deal, at first, when Minghao approached him, closed lipped friendliness, polite distance, asking for help. Mandarin for Korean, an unequal trade, lessons in communication in exchange for a balm for homesickness.

"What's wrong?" Minghao says. Always that question, earnest, head dipped to catch his eye, a hand on a shoulder, a hand around the back, a hand squeezing his neck. Gentle hands. He won't say they're loving. He can't. But affectionate, that he could agree to.

The waves lap at the shore ten meters in front of them.

"I'll tell you later," Junhui says, flashes a smile out of the corner of his mouth. Minghao drops his hand slowly. They both know later will never come. "Let's swim!" False cheerful, smile like a brick wall covered in graffiti, adorned with flowering vines. Honeysuckle scent in his teeth.

Junhui hops to his feet, doesn't bother dusting off the sand. Minghao stays sitting, looks at him, considering. Junhui does a little dance, silly wiggle, skittering fingers and open palms. Minghao rolls his eyes, but there's an uptick in his lips. He takes his hand.

The water is not warm, precisely, but it isn't cold either. Like the air has taken a different form, like the wind has turned liquid. The ocean is beautiful, today, and she wraps loving fingers around their ankles, tugs like a lover taking them to bed. Jun sends a silent prayer to her, in thanks, and apology. Thanks for the welcome, for the steady heartbeat she gives to the world. Apology for all the times over recent years he'd considered tossing himself into waters on a foreign shore and never coming up for air.

A laugh is his only warning before he's hit in the side of the head with a blast of water. Jun gasps, theatrically, turns his head deliberately slowly, mouth open in exaggerated shock. Minghao is laughing, open and free. The wind whips his hair in his face, one delighted eye watching him. For a second they're in another world, where Minghao can look at him like that and no one cares. Junhui thinks about the empty stretches of beach around them, and decides to live in that world for a little while longer.

They chase each other through the surf for a while, splashing and laughing. They're not idols, now. Just two boys. Two boys in something that might be love, in the minutes Junhui isn't afraid to look at it. With salt in his hair and his eyes and his mouth, with sun on his skin and Mandarin on the road signs that brought them here, he can look at it, out of the corner of his eye.

Panting, both of them pleasantly tired, he sloshes over to Minghao, two wet steps, sand sucking at his feet, and bends down to lift Minghao in the air. It's easy, they way Minghao molds back against him, let's Junhui carry his weight. One arm slides around Junhui's shoulders, like it doesn't matter at all that that arm has been wrapped around Junhui's neck. His lips press the top of Junhui's head, like no one is watching to know that those lips have kissed him everywhere.

Junhui has known, maybe all his life, that he loved boys. He's known almost as long that this is dangerous, in the world other people have created, long before he had the chance to make his peace with their choices. Laughter is a weapon, like love, like fists. He is stubbornly himself, happily, because happiness and stubbornness are sometimes one and the same.

Junhui knows, on a south China beach, with a man he can never tell anyone he adores in his arms, that he loves _this_ boy. That there's no hiding it, not here, not now. He's home.

Later, in the hotel room they rented, two beds a respectable distance apart, they fuck, slow and sticky, humid air trapped between their bellies, between their mouths. Minghao traces his tongue along the roof of Junhui's mouth like a cartographer, like maybe he'll be able to follow his teeth like a roadmap. He's got one hand laced through Junhui's, pinning it to the bed like a promise, like he's reading Junhui's palm with his. Life line, love line. Junhui wonders if it's easy, like mother tongues, or halting and stuttered, like a foreign alphabet. Junhui wonders if anyone else is giving him lessons.

Junhui takes him in because he doesn't know how to tell him any other way: _This is the truth, the one I never let you have_. He hitches his legs higher up his hips and rocks back into every torturous thrust.

 _What's wrong?_ Minghao always asks. It's later, now. Junhui says with his mouth against Minghao's, _I can't breathe when I'm lying about what you are to me._ Junhui says with his fingernails down Minghao's back, _If anyone finds out, you'll lose everything_. Junhui says with his heart a skittering metronome trying to break through his chest, _Stay, Ming-hao, Ming-hao, Ming-hao_.

Minghao says his name when he comes, and it's the only sound Junhui ever wants to hear.

Tucked into one bed not meant for two almost-men, they're entangled. Limbs over limbs, a confusion of body parts. Minghao dips his head under Junhui's chin so he can kiss the middle of his sternum. When he pulls back he looks at Junhui seriously, not quite sad but almost. There's a timer in the back of both of their minds. It's ticking down, every breath stolen, every heartbeat greedy. They soak up the way this, what they are, stain on the sheets, cooling sweat intermingled, could never be considered skinship.

Junhui bites him high on his bicep, holds the muscle in his teeth. Minghao huffs a breath of a laugh and smacks him a glancing shot to the back of his head, ruffling his hair more than making contact.

In the morning, Minghao is next to him, asleep. They've disentangled slightly in the night, but Minghao's leg is still slung over one of Junhui's. While he waits for him to wake, Junhui traces Chinese characters on the muscle of his inner thigh.

 _Truth_ he starts with, for a reason that only makes sense to his mostly sleeping mind. _Love_ next. With a gentle fingertip he scrawls it out as if he'd been writing with ink and not with pressure on skin. When he finishes the last character, Minghao rolls sleepily towards him and traps his hand between his thighs, soft dick nestled vulnerably against the back of his wrist.

 _Home_.

**Author's Note:**

> comments always loved and so appreciated!! come say hi on [twitter](https://twitter.com/nasaplates) and [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/nasaplates)!


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